One More Round of Applause
by queen of the moment
Summary: Many years ago there were two fools who shared an apartment.


Many years ago there were two fools who shared an apartment.

They were young and invincible and so hopelessly in love. They thought that their life would always be perfect; they thought they would always be together. Or course they were wrong. The fools are old and gray and the apartment doesn't even exist anymore. Just like the fools it was just a casualty in the war called progress. An investment firm now stands in its place; looking at it now, you would never be able to tell that it was once the entire world to the two fools.

One of the fools is called Arthur. He's currently 67 years old, and in eleven months he will lose his fight against lung cancer. All those cigarettes he had sworn would never affect him when he was young had finally caught up with him. He will die alone in a hospital bed, and no one will particularly care. In his last moments, he will think about his life in the apartment; he will die happier than he had been in months.

The other fool is called Francis. He will die seven months after his 68th birthday, of heart failure. His son will mourn for him, but he'll be okay after a few weeks. They were never that close to begin with. Francis will die in his sleep, dreaming of the apartment for the first time in years.

They were not heroes; they had never led an army into battle or saved someone from a burning building. They did absolutely nothing memorable with their lives. They were never a part of anything important. They lived average lives just like almost every other human on the planet. They will only be remembered by a handful of people, and in a few more years they will be forgotten entirely. For the sake of the two fools, we'll tell the story one last time; we'll grant them another round of applause. Even though they did nothing of national importance, they were important to a handful of people. And this story was important to them. So it will have one last telling before everything is forgotten.

Sex had always been the cornerstone of their relationship; their friends believed that they had ended up having drunken sex the very first time they met. This was mostly untrue. It was an end of semester party; Francis had just graduated, but Arthur had another year yet. Somehow they ended up spending the entire evening on the floor in the hall outside of a bathroom. Francis had sat down on the floor because the room had started to grow a bit too wobbly for his tastes, and Arthur was standing next to him, braiding his hair.

Normally Francis would not let anyone touch his hair, but he found Arthur's hand to be soothing and soon the room was not swirling around as violently as before. Arthur normally was never this affectionate, but he was drunk and was surprised to find that he quite liked the feeling of Francis' hair. He couldn't remember when he had last felt something that soft, and while he had no idea who this man was, he didn't particularly care. He sat next to Francis when his legs began to feel tired and it wasn't long before Francis fell asleep against him.

The _next_ time they met was when they had drunken sex. Perhaps this says something important about their relationship. Or perhaps not. Maybe it just means that Francis likes people to play with his hair when's he's drunk and that Arthur can actually be sweet once the majority of his buzz wears off.

They had wanted to move in together for the past six months, but there were plans to make; moving companies to hire; boxes to pack; and of course, they had to find an apartment to rent. They found a nice place in an up-and-coming part of town; it was a little bit more than they could afford, but they were fools and they thought that it wouldn't be a problem.

Back then they didn't think that money was horribly important. Nothing could get in the way of their happiness.

Moving is always a stressful event, but when they were sitting on the floor of their new apartment, eating Thai food amongst an assemblage of boxes that they had yet to unpack; they could not be happier. They were sweaty and tired, but when Francis made a joke about Arthur looking rather well-fucked, Arthur lightly slapped him before they collapsed into a pile of laughter.

When Francis came home from work the next day, he found Arthur unpacking their books. He was balancing on tip-toe as he deposited a book on the top shelf; his sweater riding up as he stretched out his arm to reach the shelf, revealing a rather nice expanse of pale skin. Francis snuck up behind him and slid his hands across the bared skin. Arthur yelped and flailed around in surprise for a moment before he realized who it was.

His panic died down immediately, and after swatting Francis for scaring him, he let him slide his hands farther up the sweater. He involuntarily shivered as Francis pushed his sweater higher up his chest and moved downwards to press open-mouthed kisses to the taught stretch of skin directly under his rib cage. Arthur had always been scrawny, but over the years Francis had grown to love the sharp bones and the tight skin stretched over them. Arthur only protested slightly when Francis suggested they have sex on the floor, amidst the boxes. It had been rather uncomfortable, but neither of them had particularly cared.

Arthur came home from work one day, feeling rather disheartened. It had been an _extraordinarily_ terrible day and all he wanted was to bury himself into their bed and never resurface again. This, however, proved to be a problem; it was Francis' day off and he was currently lying diagonally across the bed, reading. When he looked up and saw Arthur, a smile spread across his face, though it quickly disappeared when he noticed how upset he seemed. Francis quickly scrambled around so that he was lying on the bed properly and patted the space next to him.

Arthur dropped himself on the bed, immediately curling in on himself. Francis kissed him on the head and, setting the book aside, he wrapped his arms around him comfortingly. They lay like that for a few moments; until Arthur suddenly felt Francis' fingers brush up his sides, under his shirt. In a warning tone, he told Francis to stop, but no attention was paid to his request. A smirk slid across Francis' face as he pressed harder against Arthur's side, his fingers moving lithely.

The reaction was immediate; Arthur jumped and had to bite his lip to prevent any laughter from escaping. He futilely tried to get Francis to stop once more, but Francis was engrossed in tickling him now, and all Arthur could manage to get out was sharp peals of laughter.

But Arthur was not one to go down without a fight. He quickly turned to face Francis, reaching out for him and catching him unaware. Surprise flickered across his face, but it was quickly wiped away as he began to laugh. He tried to bat Arthur's hands away, but he proved to be too fast for him.

Arthur continued to tickle him, but after a lot of breathless begging from Francis, he reluctantly let his fingers come to a halt. They were practically lying on top of each other at this point, and they were content to just stay there until they get their breath back. Francis smiles and presses breathless kisses to whatever part of Arthur he can reach, while Arthur laughs once more for no reason at all; the stress and worry from his day has disappeared.

Arthur slowly sits up, and Francis reluctantly follows, wrapping an arm around him in an attempt to convince him to stay. Arthur turns to face him and reaches out, sweeping his hand under Francis' curtain of hair to tuck it gently over his shoulder. Now with access to his neck, Arthur kisses him gently below his hairline, smiling as the short hairs on the nape tickle his nose. Francis shivers and sighs, reaching behind him at a rather awkward angle to hold the back of Arthur's head. He feels the movement of Arthur's lips on his neck; they're no longer the constant, sure press of kisses, but the sporadic stuccoes of words mumbled into skin. He can't hear them, but he really doesn't need to. _I love you so much, I am nothing without you, I will never love anyone but you._ Words that Arthur will always think but never fully vocalize. Francis smiles and says them for him; feeling how Arthur's lips come to a sudden halt. Arthur breathes deeply; the warm breath skating across Francis' skin and making him shudder. Arthur presses one last kiss to his neck before he moves around so that he can face Francis and kiss him properly.

Things went well for them for a very long time. They were happy and content; they even talked about getting married a few times. But of course it didn't work out- these things never do. It had been slowly building up for a few months (though it had only been noticeable for a few days before the argument.) Their relationship had been doomed from the beginning; their friends were shocked that they lasted longer than a weekend.

In the end it was triggered by something completely inconsequential: namely, Francis had spilt some of his coffee grounds that afternoon and Arthur had to clean them up. It was nothing to end a 6 year relationship over, but they had a tendency to fight like children. They'd bring up past sins, pick at the other's old wounds, bring up whatever the other was the sensitive about.

This was their worst argument to date (even worse than the time they were drunk and Arthur threw a bottle of bourbon at Francis' head;) it went on for hours and the topics of debate ranged from big problems like Francis' vanity and Arthur's superiority complex, all the way down to how Francis clogged up the shower drain with his hair and how Arthur would forget to pick up his tea mugs when he was finished.

In the third hour of their argument Arthur grabbed his coat, yelled something about how Francis was probably cheating on him anyway and stormed out. Francis threw one of Arthur's forgotten mugs at the door behind him. Arthur didn't come home and Francis did not wait up for him.

Two days later they met to work out the final details of their break-up. The apartment was Francis' so Arthur would have to be the one to move. They arranged when the moving day would be and they divvied up the things they had bought since they moved in together. Arthur was moved into his own apartment by the end of the week. Their life together was over.

There was no grand climax where they get back together. Francis never showed up on his doorstep with a dozen roses and a sheepish smile; Arthur never drunkenly called him at three in the morning to spit out a garbled, rambling confession that he missed him. Arthur just packed up his things and they did not speak again. They didn't even lie to each other and say that they could still be friends.

Their lives weren't miserable though; two years later Arthur would meet a Belgian woman and fall head over heels in love with her. They'd be married one November and while they had no children, they would live happily together until she died at 56 in a car accident. Arthur would not fall in love again.

Depending on your point of view, Francis was more or less lucky than Arthur. He would have a long string of relationships, some lasting as little as a night or as long as 11 years. He'd have a son through one of these relationships, but he only really was able to see him a few times a year. He never married, but he never truly felt alone. Not until the days before his death.

I told you they were fools, didn't I? Sure, they lived fine lives, but their days were never as happy as they were in that little unimportant apartment. Life was eternally rosy there; they were happy and content and more in love than they ever would be again. They didn't know that, of course. They had no way of knowing that when they would turn old and gray, the memory of their life together would be all they had left.


End file.
